61 Frames Per Second

Though I've had my new Nintendo DSi for almost two days now, I've only had a few hours of playtime so far. Overall I am very impressed with the upgrades and the new features. A few minor features in particular have caught my attention that I don't think I've seen mentioned elsewhere. For your benefit, here's what I've noticed so far, including why I brought the DSi on my lunch break instead of my iPod:

• The interior plastic (the stylus slot and SD card tray) are the complimentary color of the system's exterior. That means they're white on the black DSi and orange on the blue one. It would not be an unsafe assumption that a violet DSi would have yellow features, green would have red, and so on.
  
  
• The SD card slot cover is not a hinged door like on most digital cameras but a slide-out tray of flexible plastic. You will likely worry about breaking it the first time it opens, just remember to slide out, not flip down.
  
  
• The DSi supports high capacity SD cards out of the box, which means no storage problems for a long time. You still can't load games off of it like the recent Wii update, but maybe someday...
  
  
• AAC audio files continue playing when you close the DSi as long as you're wearing headphones. This means you can use the DSi as your personal music player, but not as a boombox (unlike the iPhone which plays through the speaker when the screen is asleep as well).
  
  
• Any effects you've applied to the song continue if listening with the DSi closed. Pressing L and R for added percussion works too. I totally walked down Crosby Street tapping handclaps along with a slowed-down Juan MacLean track this morning.
  
  
• You can play along with some of the audio visualizers. In the Super Mario one, Lakitu creates a waveform with coins and you can make Mario jump to grab them by tapping L or R (adding percussion to the song). The Excitebike track is formed by the waveform pattern as well. Turning on the Radio filter will dull all of the peaks and valleys, while ramping up the speed with create sharp spikes in the path that send the racers flying off screen! Even in the wireframe space flight (a la Star Fox or Red Alarm), tapping L or R launches lasers shaped like your ship. There's no point to these, it's just kinda fun.
  
  

• Volume controlled by one vertical button on the left hand side of the device.
  
  
• A single button press gets you back to the system menu, regardless of what you were doing.
  
  
• Icons on the system menu shift to make room when you're moving them around (something I wish Wii Channels did).
  
  
• The camera always makes an audible shutter sound, regardless of the system's volume or presense of headphones. The japanese sure do hate sneaky perverts.